"In my heart it was an impulse, because I knew what I needed to do to move forward." It wasn't pursed, or particularly stylish, but this pitch from Don Draper — made in the post-corporate, pre-California Dreamin' realities of Sunday night's season-four finale of Mad Men — seems to incorporate the crossroads at which we now stand on television's least satisfying yet most surprising show: not a loose end completely tied, and yet... we know so much. And we see even more.

Over the past few months, we've watched what I consider to be a real triumph for the series. The attitude has shifted. The voice, too. And that costume rack has mirrored it all: The hands controlling Mad Men are always delicate, but in a way that reveals a struggle. A difficult goddamn struggle.

And, man, it's clear that Don has turned a hard corner. We saw his slovenly descent, post-divorce, into alcoholism and despair — his transformation from suave-but-scared playboy into hooker-happy drunken slob. And his wardrobe suffered, not with bad decisions, but with general unkemptness. The minimalist sleek that had come to define one of the culture's great antihero archetypes had faded with the vomit stains on his shirt and the red lines across his otherwise perfectly handsome face. We saw him cry. We saw him sell cars with a bad haircut. If this was the beginning of the Sixties Revolution, it sure felt like the end of something else.

After hitting rock bottom, we watched Draper begin a slow rebirth: he swims, he is sober. He is pressed. He looks handsome again. He starts a semi-serious relationship with a perfectly normal, abnormally perfect woman named Faye. And he connects with his children, the daughter in particular. Being a father, it became clear, was to become a man, and Don looked most confident this season not as a single man at Benihana's but as that man — dropping off the kids in a blue sweater or red button-up, flopping onto them in a hotel room, loosening his tie a bit, as it were. Or, you know, in a Pontiac Imperial. And flannel pants — pay attention to the flannel pants. Fatherhood offered what California, that place where he felt himself and wore fantastic sport coats, could not: a man he could live with, rather than the man he had made up.

And then the random shag with the secretary. Like everything on this show, it seemed insignificant at the time, and then it looked too good to be true. But put the pieces together and you see the finale's surprise coming. Remember the awkward encounter Faye had with Sally? Not exactly mom material. The would-be-ex-girlfriend does deliver a significant opening line on Sunday night, though: "You don't have to do it alone. But if you resolve some of that you might be more comfortable with everything." And Don, at last, is ready to be comfortable. I mean, did you see that checked blazer? I couldn't stop tweeting about it. And it's nothing short of amazing how Don ends up the one at ease, what with the Sixties dropping so much wear and tear upon the casual style of our disenfranchised young folk. We see them express their helplessness in, you know, the horrifying leather blazers of Peggy's boyfriend, and it reminds you today of the importance in Don's fashionable message: stay the course in a fine suit, and soon enough you'll get your day in the sportcoated sun. Or Megan, and she ain't too shabby. A client asks: "Don't you want to go home sometime and see a steak on the table?" Yes, sir. Yes he does.

There are other spoilers, and spoilers within the spoilers: Peggy lands the panty account, and will assuredly move beyond copywriter status next season; Betty fires the babysitter, and probably sets up a move from maternal to paternal custody; Joan keeps the baby, and makes a great joke about her own boobs. Everyone has made strides in some direction, and the men have taken their clothes along for the ride: Pete is a daddy, exuding his grownupedness with charcoal and black suits that show Mad Men is (almost) ready to kiss the skinny tie goodbye; Sterling lived to see another year, and keeps teaching us how to zip together a refined look in three pieces. It is a kind of constant on the show, this moving forward — the kids learn the rules (suits, gray ones), the fogies focus on the details (though tuck in that shirt, Roger), and the heroes learn to lighten things up, even when they get back from the left coast. What will the last half of the Sixties teach us? A lot more than we've already learned, I'm sure. But for now, let's turn it back to 1913 — we've got some Boardwalk Empire to watch.

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